Has anyone turned down a selective Comp for a 2nd Tier Indie

[mum1969]

One good argument in favour of choosing a selective comp over an indie is university entrance. Top universities are being encouraged to take more state school pupils, thus coming from a state school can now be seen as an advantage. It certainly is worth considering when weighing up the pros and cons.

[Daogroupie]

Cutting42, the timing of the marketing is very clever. All those parents looking for a backup, getting very nervous in the final weeks before March 1st. They are like sitting ducks who get caught up in it all and lo and behold they get the selective school place anyway but end up turning it down for the indie. We loved every moment we spent at our local indies during exams and interviews. It was a blast two years in a row. DG

[Cutting42]

Cutting42, the timing of the marketing is very clever. All those parents looking for a backup, getting very nervous in the final weeks before March 1st. They are like sitting ducks who get caught up in it all and lo and behold they get the selective school place anyway but end up turning it down for the indie. We loved every moment we spent at our local indies during exams and interviews. It was a blast two years in a row. DG

Totally agree, I was there as well, caught up in the worries. They tell a very compelling story and like I said, if I had the cash I could have fallen for it as well. I loved watching the car parks. I have never seen so many nice cars outside of a car show!

[Tdada]

Thank you all for being so supportive understanding especially RR. I will never be sure what the right decision is. I am confident that DCs would also do well in state sector and benefit in other ways. It is quite possible a waste of money and counterproductive. DCs are all enjoying schools so I am persuaded that it is okay.


And whilst we can afford it, we could have invested the money in pensions, nice cars and hols but........

[RationalityRules]

The 'right' decision is, I think, any decision that results in children enjoying a happy, productive time at school and leaving with a lifelong love of learning and some firm friendships, having discovered where their talents and interests lie and having gained a sense of how to exist morally, responsibly and productively in the modern world. These outcomes are achievable at all schools, from the most expensive independent schools with the best facilities to the non-selective so-called 'sink schools' and they are achieved not just by teachers but through the support and guidance of parents and extended family, peer group, non-teaching and pastoral staff, clubs and activities undertaken outside school and who knows what else.

I work as a school counsellor across a number of schools and I can report truly that many of the unhappiest and most troubled teens out there are those who are achieving extremely highly, often because they are pushed by parents who value academic success above anything else. Will high-achieving children be the happiest and most productive during their teenage years and their adult life because they've got into good schools and got great grades all the way through? Most probably not. In fact, one of the groups of people in this country suffering the most mental health problems is mid-teens at selective schools, which is a sobering thought.

Making the 'right' decision becomes easier if we consider our children as individuals, and do not fall into the trap of competitively ranking schools against each other according to their academic success records. It is a fallacy to think that one school can guarantee your individual child a better outcome than another, just because it sits higher in the league tables or gets more leavers into particular universities or courses.

Of course, there are many schools and tutors who stand to gain financially from parents buying into league tables or leavers' statistics, and who are very happy to set themselves up as experts and exploit parents' fears and worries at difficult times. What we as parents need to remember is that we know our children best, we love them most, and that any decision guided by our love for them as individuals is likely to be a 'right' one.

RR

[Daogroupie]

Very interesting post RR, thank you for taking the time to write this. How do parents react when they hear this or do they hear it? DG

[Daogroupie]

Very interesting post RR, thank you for taking the time to write this. How do parents react when they hear this or do they hear it? DG

[Tdada]

I am impressed by your insights. Definitely worth reflecting on. I think that one can unconsciously signal values to children. I am sure that they realise what high value I place on education just by our prioritisation. I would want this to build into too much pressure. No sign that this is the case as children are happy and doing well but your post has triggered introspection (I am prone to do so).

Actually I preferred the system that I grew up in...the gift nationalised all the good schools and we had common entrance exams so no economic selection.

[RationalityRules]

Tdada, I think it is a very good thing for our children to see that we place a high value on the importance of education and on trying our best. Where that can tip over into the wrong message is where parents start to link 'doing well' with emotional or physical rewards, teaching children that their self-worth is linked to their (academic, musical, sporting) achievement. What can happen then is that a child or young person's self esteem becomes dependent upon success in one area. If they fail to achieve in that area, even once, they feel worthless. Even if they achieve again and again and again at the highest level in that area, they may feel worthless if it's not an area they've chosen for themselves or they may start to feel hopeless and depressed at the thought of having to continue to achieve highly forever to avoid the feelings of worthlessness associated with failure.

Children and teenagers (and indeed adults) need to find their place in the world, and that is often not easy. We all need to try things, doing well at some and failing at others. This helps us to discover what we are naturally good at and what we are naturally interested in. This is finding out who we are - not who our parents want us to be. Failing, or finding things difficult, also helps us to recognise that hard work can lead to improvement and enjoyment, and that these are as valuable as high achievement. The idea in today's world (driven by league tables and inspection reports and peddled everywhere from school gates to respected newspapers) that one school is 'better' than another because of its academic record can be very damaging, if it leads parents to drive children purely towards academic work and achievement and to teach children that achieving well is everything or that failing is terrible.

It's an obvious thing to say, but not every child is going to be a doctor. Not even every child who has the natural academic ability to be a doctor is going to be a doctor. They may not want to be! The 'brightest' child in a school may be a girl who most wants to start a family in her early twenties and work with disadvantaged children for little financial reward. She should not be made to feel that she is somehow failing her parents or her school by making that choice. Likewise, an 'average' academic child may have an interest in medicine sparked by something or someone inspiring, and may work their socks off to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to become a doctor. How terrible if a child were to think, because they 'failed' a test at 11 and ended up in a 'bad' school, that they weren't academic enough to follow their dreams. With passion, hard work and good self-esteem, most children can achieve most things that they desire and lead fulfilling, happy, productive lives. Without passion and good self-esteem, unhappy children may grow into unhappy adults, living a life that they have not chosen for themselves. In my opinion, many of the depressed and anxious teens I see are just coming to this realisation. They have been pushed to achieve academically the whole way through their lives, and when they get to GCSE/A Level stage they start to realise both that they still have years and years of hard work ahead of them with no let-up and that they don't know why they are doing all the hard work, since they don't have a dream of their own to follow. It's very difficult for children who have never had a choice to understand that in fact they do have choices, and that they are responsible for making good ones; many of them feel trapped in their parents' ambitions and really feel that there is no way out of the life that has been prescribed for them.

There are some really first-class schools in our country and it is wonderful that we live in a world in which so many opportunities are open to our children. On the other hand, it is daunting for parents to have to guide children through those opportunities without any sort of framework. As you say, the education system we grew up with may have been very different to that we're faced with for our children.

I must qualify my earlier post by saying that it is not the case that all families where the parents value academic achievement highly will end up with a depressed teen; there are multiple risk factors for teenage depression and anxiety and 'pushy parenting' is only one of them.

DG, in answer to your specific question, most parents that I deal with genuinely want what is best for their children/young adults and are saddened and embittered when they discover that pushing their children so hard towards academic achievement is having a negative effect. Some parents become defensive or angry, refusing to believe that their well-intentioned behaviour could be the cause of depression, and many struggle to really hear what their child is saying or to allow their child to have a voice at all. Most become sad and confused and some find it very difficult to understand that their focus on academic achievement is not a wholly positive thing (since they have been conditioned to think that ensuring academic achievement is the most important and valuable thing they can do for their child). The aim of my work is to help parents to understand that the most positive thing they can do for their children is to show them unconditional love. Not love that is conditional upon achievement, but love that exists for the person, whatever they are interested in, whatever grades they get, whatever they choose to do with their life, whatever they look like. There is an awful lot of evidence that shows that children and young adults who enjoy this sort of unconditional love and support (and the high self-esteem associated with it) go on to choose rewarding, interesting careers, to manage their health, their relationships and their money wisely and to make positive, wise decisions throughout their lives. For most parents who consider themselves supportive, that is what they have been hoping for for their children all the way through anyway.

For many parents, it is hard to separate their own self-esteem from their children's achievements. Daily I speak with parents who genuinely believe that if their child fails an exam, or fails to secure a place at a particular school/university, that means that they have failed as a parent. This isn't true, of course, but it can take a lot of time for parents to accept that successful parenting isn't about achievement.

For the children I work with who suffer specifically from low self-esteem linked to pushy parenting, we aim to help them to understand that they cannot be perfect; that they will be naturally good at some things and not good at others; that hard work can bring improvement and enjoyment even without leading to achievement; that continually judging yourself against others is a sure-fire route to madness; that courses and careers with the highest value to you are the ones that you choose for the right reasons and that self-esteem is linked to self, not to other people's views of us (even our parents) or to achievements.

Apologies for the long post - a subject I feel passionately about! Thanks for reading. I am very interested to hear others' thoughts. RR

[instantsunshine]

A child's self esteem & therefore happiness is worth so much more than league tables IMHO. Surely the so called (& to an extent self-styled) "best" schools with great facilities, or fantastic examination results are only of any real value to you if your DC uses the facilities or enjoys an academically pressurised environment. No point in being at a school where there is an olympic standard swimming pool if your DC hates swimming. Same applies if an obscure or particularly taxing academic subject is offered but your DC has no interest in nor aptitude for such subject.

Having said that we all want the best for our DC which may be a super selective academic environment (whether it be independent or state). Experience has shown me that we have to be totally subjective and assess what is the best for our DC rather than what other parents, schools etc consider is the "best" school in the area.

PS - failing the odd exam or two is neither life threatening nor likely to result in serious injury - sometimes a sense of perspective can do wonders!